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Monthly Archives: 七月 2015

My niece is over from Florida for a wee bit and we have been busy climbing various green and gusty hills around Edinburgh, sipping beer and cider in dubious pubs, eating too much food, and just yesterday visiting a new attraction north of Edinburgh, The Kelpies.

Mythological beasts possessing the power of 100 horses The Kelpies of legend are here an arresting pair of horse head steel sculptures dominating an area once known for steel production. Horses and water were a vital part of this now-moribund industry and the sculptures honour not only the history of this area, but the horses and the flowing water that made it possible.

The Kelpies, before the storm descended

Colourful, bunting-festooned canal boats line the lead up to these sky-catching sculptures, and on the other side pedestrians and cyclists wend their way through meadow land and marshes on a raised wooden path. The sky matched…

Are you looking for a spicy, seasonally-appropriate, festaholic cocktail to kick off your holiday weekend? One that quickly & easily dispatches five of the 28 pounds of celebratory strawberries you picked at the farm last week? One that is so aggressively spicy that your husband takes one sip, carefully slides the glass out of his reach and coughs, “It’s very… um… you.” Of course you are!

This preserve started out as a jam, but as the mixture of strawberries, sugar, chiles, lime & tequila sat on my counter, smelling amazing, I got an irresistible urge for a spicy strawberry margarita. So I pulled off a ladle (or two) of the macerating fruit, cut off a teeny section of habanero pepper, and tossed it all in the food processor. Salted a glass, dug a few lonely ice cubes out of the over-stuffed freezer, et voila!Instant…

Ah, the joys of zucchini. It grows so easily that it makes any gardener feel good. But then it keeps coming, and coming….and coming….and then you get so much you can’t even give it away (neither can your neighbors). And god forbid you try to cook it all- your kids will never forgive you if you serve it every night (trust us, we have tried and they haven’t forgotten).

Happily we do have a few recipes that make the bountiful, but otherwise somewhat bland and watery zucchini worth eating throughout the summer. One of our faves is Redcat Zucchini, but that recipe is best done in small batches. What if you are grilling for a group? Well, this charred zucchini recipe is the perfect answer. This recipe is easy, tasty, time-efficient and it features ingredients that should be in your garden or…

Full disclosure; cocktail-oriented folks send us all sorts of cool spirits, bitters, flavorings and gear to try out here at the farm. We make no promises, but if we like an ingredient or tool we use/mention it in our posts (and always disclose the source). That said, we almost never do a full post on something that is sent to us…until now.

But when the team at Ash Apothecary from Brooklyn (they have a kickstarter, btw) offered to send us some flavored syrups, we looked at their flavors and decided to give them a try. And we are very impressed with what they sent- enough to run an experiment making easy, but deeply flavored, riffs on sours and tiki drinks using their syrups.

So why would “farmers” like us use someone else’s syrups vs. making our own? Firstly, the syrups are excellent, with clear and creative flavors. Secondly, consistency can be…

Because it’s called Great Expectations, everybody’s expectations of it are too… high.

It’s probably pretty arrogant to put together a BEST BOOK EVER list of any kind. For one thing, nobody has read every book ever published, so it’s impossible to know which one is the best. One of the books that an expert hasn’t read might be the best ever. Great Expectations is one example of a book that gets mentioned as BEST EVER, but a bunch of books that never got published could be better and nobody would know because nobody has read them. To be fair, any BEST BOOKS EVER list should say something like BEST BOOKS EVER THAT HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED AND READ BY A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF PEOPLE.

But I don’t think anybody will click on a website with a title like that.

The purpose of a BEST BOOKS EVER list is to promote polite discussions about books…

As the year comes to a close, it’s important to reflect. About your life, your goals, your relationships, and – of course – about the food you ate. Of course.

And, since I dedicated a pretty sizable chunk of time towards stuffing my face this year, it’s seemed only right that I documented some of my favorites. So, without further ado, here they are – the best things I ate in 2014. (In no particular order, with the exception of the first item from Blackbird, which absolutely takes the top spot on my list this year.)

In my chicken eating days, satay used to be something that I really enjoyed eating. Even today, if it came in front of me, I will need a little bit of self control to not pick up a skewer. The answer to my craving and possibly yours is this recipe. Its packed with the same flavors of a chicken satay and the substitute for chicken that is tofu in this case has a great texture. I used fried tofu for this recipe because it helps hold the shape of the tofu when you marinade it and grill it. Also it makes tofu absorb the marinade better and gives a good texture and bite to the overall dish. This recipe would be great for a barbecue party. A little something different from your usual marinade.

The marinade is simple and doesn’t call for many ingredients. Use a homemade or a store bought curry powder for this…

I have never made any kind of pasta or noodle from scratch before, but after this experience I am definitely willing to experiment some more. These noodles are incredibly easy to make, in fact it was a lot of fun to make these. I have always used packaged Japanese udon noodles in soups and stir fry but this was the first time when I thought of making them at home. After you make this recipe – once you have the basic noodles, you can then put them in an airtight box and use them fresh in other recipes for upto a week and for much longer if you freeze them. Just divide them into individual portions and freeze them in separate containers or ziplock bags, then when you are ready to use them, pull out one or two portions and just drop them in the broth if making soup or thaw a little…

The last recipe in the Asian series is Roti John. After much research, thinking and disregarding obvious choices – noodles, fried rice etc. I picked this street food from Singapore for two reasons. First that it has an Indian connection and second its something new for a lot of you out there. I mean I didn’t know about it before I started looking for a Singaporean recipe to make.

This recipe is similar to a recipe that is common in every household in India – its our own version of french toast. Yes, french toast in India is made savory and I mean with spices, green chili, cilantro and onions. Here is a funny story – when I moved to the States for the first time – I pretty much knew what was what in food except for bagels and that french toast were not savory. So in my school…

The entire time I lived in Florida, for some reason I never ate the cinnamon swirl cake from Starbucks. Its my husband’s favorite and yet I didn’t know anything about it up until our recent trip to Orlando. I tasted the cake for the first time and totally loved it. We were in Orlando just for 3 days so I couldn’t get enough of it…because surprisingly none of the other Starbucks have that cake – I checked in Michigan, Vancouver and in Toronto. So upon our return to India I looked up for the recipe and found many versions of the cinnamon swirl cake and made a few of them. They were close but not the same. So, that will have to be a treat kept aside just for when I visit FL.

From my recent trip to Toronto, I picked up a donut pan from a store in St. Lawrence market…